Enterprise Architect - Work From Home in Cardiff

Join Companies House as a Principal Enterprise Architect (Data), a leading role within our Enterprise Architecture team at the heart of a nationally significant organisation. This is a high-impact, senior technical role where you will shape the data architecture underpinning services used at scale by millions of users. The decisions you make will directly influence how trusted data is designed, governed and reused across the organisation.

This role offers the opportunity to work with modern cloud technologies, microservice architectures and complex legacy environments, while setting the technical direction for enterprise-level data architecture. You will act as a technical leader, guiding delivery teams, influencing strategic decisions and ensuring data is treated as a critical enterprise asset.

If you are an experienced data architect looking for a role where your expertise can make a visible, national impact, this is an opportunity to lead, influence and shape the future of data at scale.

Security Clearance is an essential requirement for this campaign. You will be based at either our Cardiff or Edinburgh office, where you will be expected to attend on a regular basis. Remote contracts may be considered as an exception whereby commuting to the office location of your team is not reasonably practicable.

The Principal Enterprise Architect (Data) is a senior technical leadership role responsible for defining, governing and evolving the organisations enterprise data architecture. The post holder will ensure that data architecture supports Companies Houses strategic priorities, enables secure and trusted use of data, and strengthens interoperability across legacy, modern and third-party systems.

Working closely with colleagues across the Digital and Data directorates, as well as senior business stakeholders, you will help design and assure robust, secure and resilient data solutions that support organisational priorities and long-term transformation.

You will act as the authoritative voice on enterprise data architecture, providing clear direction, assurance and guidance across programmes and projects. You will treat data as a managed enterprise asset with clear ownership, robust lifecycle controls and measurable business value.

This is a highly collaborative role, working with senior stakeholders, architects, delivery teams and governance forums to reduce risk, improve data quality and enable scalable, reusable data solutions.

• Lead the development and maintenance of the enterprise data architecture and roadmap, aligned to organisational strategy and change portfolios.
• Define and maintain enterprise-level data models (conceptual and logical, and where appropriate physical).
• Establish canonical data definitions, domain boundaries and integration patterns to support reuse and interoperability.
• Provide architectural assurance to ensure solutions align with agreed data architecture principles.
• Support the identification, valuation and prioritisation of critical data assets to maximise value and return on investment.
• Create, publish and maintain enterprise data standards, patterns and guidelines.
• Chair or contribute to data governance forums and architecture review boards.
• Approve, manage or escalate deviations from agreed data standards.
• Ensure data governance policies (including classification, access and retention) are embedded in delivery.
• Identify data-related risks and compliance impacts and support appropriate mitigation.

Promote strong data quality, metadata and master data management practices.

• Define data quality indicators and frameworks for measurement and improvement.
• Drive adoption of data ownership and stewardship across the organisation.
• Ensure effective data lifecycle management from creation through to archival.
• Support programmes and projects to translate business needs into robust and compliant data designs.
• Provide specialist data architecture advice to solution architects and development teams.
• Assist with complex data migrations, legacy transformations and API-based integration approaches.
• Support data platform and tooling decisions, ensuring alignment with enterprise standards.
• Ensure data architecture supports the secure handling of personal, sensitive and restricted data.
• Align data designs with legal, regulatory and policy requirements, including data protection legislation.
• Work closely with security architecture colleagues to ensure secure data flows and access controls.
• Advocate data-driven decision making and provide mentoring and guidance to colleagues across the organisation.

Significant experience working as an enterprise or senior data architect within complex organisations.

Strong experience in enterprise data modelling, data governance and data architecture design.

Experience working within large-scale, hybrid environments, including legacy systems, cloud platforms and third-party services.

Demonstrable experience designing and assuring data integration solutions, including APIs and distributed services.

Knowledge of data quality, metadata management, master data management and data taxonomy approaches.

Experience working with data standards and structured reporting formats (for example XBRL, iXBRL, JSON Schema or OpenAPI).

Strong understanding of data security, privacy and risk, including secure handling of personal and sensitive data.

Professional certifications or qualifications in architecture or data disciplines (for example TOGAF, DAMA, CDMP).

Cloud platform data certifications (for example AWS, Azure or Google Cloud).

Experience with modern data platforms, analytics ecosystems and data tooling.

Ability to balance immediate delivery needs with longer-term strategic architectural vision.